The Other Widow (26 page)

Maggie knows she's in over her head with this claim. She's not a cop. Not anymore. She's an insurance investigator, she tells herself. She needs to reel herself in. Affairs and tie-wrapped brakes. What is she thinking? Still. She's so close . . .

She eases out to the pavement, careful not to open her door all the way; she's parked too close to the person next to her. No choice, really, since her car's so huge. If someone told her years ago she'd be driving a Land Rover, she'd have laughed. “Are you fucking
kidding
me? Those things are gas guzzlers. They're the
reason
for all these wars,” she would have said. Did say, in fact, more times than she could count, zipping along the highway in the cheapest, smallest car she could find.

She hurries into Yoblansky's and spots Lucas sitting at a table not far from the door, but a little out of the way, off the beaten track, offering at least a hint of privacy. “Hi,” he says. He stands up, pulls out her chair.

“Gentleman.” She smiles.

“Of course. You should see me
before
I've had two beers.”

“I
have,
” she says. She glances at the menu. “At least I hope so. This morning? At work?”

He leans over, points out a couple of items on the menu. “The chicken's good,” he says. “Nothing fancy, but it's good. So your client. Her car break down?”

“Something like that,” Maggie says.

He looks gorgeous with his dark blue shirt, his leather jacket, a new haircut, she thinks, since that morning. “Sorry I'm late,” she says. “I hate it when people keep me waiting.”

He shrugs. “That sort of thing doesn't bother me.”

“Yeah?” she says. “I'll leave if someone's really late. I can't stand just sitting, just—waiting.”

“Really?” he says. “I'll have to remember that.”

“A
wise
gentleman.”

When the waitress comes to their table, Lucas orders for them both.

“I'm glad you decided to come.” He folds his hands and leans over the table. The people in a booth behind them laugh at something Maggie didn't hear. “I was afraid you wouldn't.”

“To be honest,” she says, “I came close to canceling on you.”

“What changed your mind?”

She shrugs. “Nothing, really. I mean, what's the harm? A drink's a drink.”

“Or a drink's a chicken sandwich.” He smiles. “How long you been out?”

“A while,” she says, and the waitress returns, sets their drinks down too hard on the table. Beer sloshes over the sides. Maggie's fingers close around the mug and she takes a couple of swallows. “So when's your uncle coming back?”

“Monday. Maybe. He isn't sure.”

“Listen,” Maggie says. “I'm not so good at this. I'm a little out of practice.”

“Me, too,” he says. “But, hey. We did it, right? We're having a social interaction.” And Maggie sees he has it, too, this shyness she has, this fear that makes her want to hole up in her apartment and makes dating such a challenge.

“Yeah.”

“So maybe next time . . .” he says.

“Next time?”

“It'll be easier. A piece of cake. And speaking of dessert . . .”

“Totally stuffed,” Maggie says. “But I'll have a bite of whatever you order. As long as it's chocolate.”

They split a slice of cake. Chocolate. They finish off their beers, poke at the dessert with their forks. They talk—about the uncle, the business, about Maggie's job at the insurance company, her job with the Boston police. They talk about how cold the winter's been, about everything. But not Iraq, not about the way her hands shake sometimes for no reason, the way she's lost touch with her friends, replaced her social life with a TV.

“Hey,” Lucas says later, when the dessert is long gone, when they've polished off their beers, when the place is packed to overflowing and the waitress has swatted the check on the table, face-down in front of Maggie. “Do you know that guy?”

Maggie slides the check to the center of the table. “I think she's into you,” she says, nodding toward the waitress. “What guy?”

“At that table over there,” Lucas says, and he cuts his eyes toward a shadowed booth in a corner near the door.

“No,” she says. “I don't think so. I can't really see him. Why?” She bends down to grab her purse, slides into her coat.

“He's been staring at you all night.”

“Oh,” she says. “
That
. Happens all the time. My beauty, you know.” She laughs, but Lucas doesn't.

“I can see that,” he says, and Maggie feels her cheeks turn red. She's grateful for the darkness of the bar. He stares at her.

“God,” she says. “Stop, willya? You're making me self-conscious.”

“Sure. Sorry.” Lucas sticks a wad of bills under a water glass and the two of them stand up to leave.

“So where's this guy?” Maggie turns around again, hoping for a better look, but the table is empty. “Where'd he go? Maybe we can fix him up with our waitress.”

“Gone,” Lucas says. “He took off a couple minutes ago.”

XXXII

KAREN

K
aren closes Tomas's door with a tiny whisper sound and almost runs down the odious dark stairs. She flings herself against the heavy outside door to the sidewalk, but once outside, she doesn't want to go back home. She isn't ready. She'll go see Alice at Bound for Glory.

She takes the train back to the restaurant where she'd left her car hours before and drives straight to the bookstore. The sound of tinkling bells announces her entrance and she stands, for a few seconds, in the doorway, trying to catch her breath.

“Are we alone?” She looks around.

“Sadly.” Alice sighs. “January.”

“I've done something really stupid.” Karen crosses the room and takes off her coat, hangs it on a hook behind the counter.

“What? Oh. Before I forget—” Alice reaches for a little pile of books beside the register. “They're on grief,” she says. “I've been meaning to give them to you, but I keep forgetting.”

“Thanks,” Karen says. “These are great. They're really—I slept with Tomas.”

“Wow.” Alice raises one eyebrow. “That's kind of—umm—out of character. Sleeping with some guy you haven't seen in—what? A year? Two years? Not a very Karen thing to do.”

Karen sighs. “I'll straighten out those shelves,” she says, but she doesn't move. She runs her thumb along the pages of her little pile of books. The store is lit completely by the lamps and the smattering of lights across the ceiling. The yellow day is now the color of mud; almost no light comes through the windows, and Karen eyes the reading area, longs for a quick nap. Behind the crowded shelves, two couches and a wooden rocker sit enticingly on a worn Persian rug—Persian to match the cats, Alice said when she bought it. There is always a fresh pot of coffee, nearly always pastries from the Queen of Cups. The ambience is cozy. It is, as Alice always says, her second home.

“Maybe that's exactly why I
did
sleep with him,” Karen says. “Maybe I just wanted to feel something.
Anything
. And he was . . . there.” Some people can get away with acting on impulse, Karen thinks, but she's never really been one of them. Dorrie probably is.
Definitely
is.

“Maybe.” Alice looks up. The bells tinkle. “Hello!” she says, as two women close the door behind them. “Welcome to Bound for Glory,” and she squeezes out from behind the counter, walks toward the door. “Is this your first visit?”

Karen helps out, stalling until rush hour is over and even then she takes the long way home. She wishes now she'd joined Tomas in the shower at his place. She feels dirty. No, she thinks. The shower wouldn't help; it's more that she feels tainted, compromised, and she's surprised by sudden overwhelming guilt. She'd thought she could escape for a couple of hours, feel some kind of vindication for what Joe did to her, to their marriage, all those months.
Years
, for all she knows. She'd also hoped that being with Tomas would erase all thoughts of both her dead husband
and
Edward. And it has. She wasn't banking on this, though, this guilt, remorse, almost. It was too soon.

Maybe, she thinks, pondering the afternoon on her way home, she'd wanted to see if the feelings for Tomas that she had up until today ignored, denied, could ever be revived. Like it or not,
ready
or not, she's alone now. There's no husband, good or bad, faithful or philandering. She is totally alone in a drafty old house in the middle of Waltham, sharing a bed that's far too large for only her, with Antoine, who would doubtless go completely nuts if she actually did take up with someone. If nothing else, Antoine is loyal to his rotten, furry, growling little core. But not Karen. Or so she'd thought.

The second she heard the shower come on, dribbly and sparse from the bad pressure on the fourth floor, as soon as she heard Tomas begin to sing, she knew she'd made a terrible mistake. Tomas himself doesn't worry her in the least—she can tell him that she feels disloyal, she needs time. She can say the cops know she was right there when Joe died. She needs to be careful, she can tell him. She looks guilty enough already—the insurance policy, her presence. The fact that she's involved with another man . . . it could destroy her.

No. It isn't really Tomas. It's herself she's worried about—her sanity. Her dignity, maybe. She isn't sure. She only knows that she feels duplicitous, as if she's spit on everything she valued, as if she's spit on Joe. Even if he wasn't the best husband these past months, he was still the love of her life. How could she taint his memory the way she has, demean herself the way she did this afternoon? She doesn't even
love
Tomas.
Never
loved him; she can see that now. It was only lust, maybe a sprinkling of revenge for Joe's philandering, a smattering of longing for Tomas, of course, for their friendship years before. But mostly it was lust.

The odor of his building is inside her pores, the smell of soap and floor cleaner and garlic, of Tomas's hands, his skin, the odor of their lovemaking. She'll wash her clothes when she gets home, her hair. She won't think about today again, at least not for a while. She stares through the windshield. A dark night. Streetlights shine like small round stars against the black.

She turns on her iPod, fast-forwards through the mournful, melancholy songs she's listened to since Joe died, fiddles through to vintage Springsteen. She turns it up. And then she turns it up louder, singing quietly along. She sings louder, pressing her foot down harder on the gas.
Tramps like us, Baby we were born to run
. For the first time in years, she feels like a woman. For the first time since Karen can remember, she feels alive!

When she gets home, she realizes she's forgotten to set the new alarm again. A foreboding, although at first she doesn't see anything out of place. It's only when she's taken off her coat and tossed her hat on the couch.

Antoine shivers in a corner of the kitchen, his fur damp and cold, as if he's just come in from the yard. Antoine doesn't have a doggie door, even though Karen had for years insisted they should get one. Joe hated the idea, thought it was inviting trouble. Rats, he said, or, hell, a break-in. “At the very least he'll bring in all his friends,” Joe said one night, shaking his head and walking out of the kitchen, flapping the sports page loudly. “That's ridiculous,” Karen had said. “Antoine doesn't have any friends.”

“What happened, sweetie?” She stoops to pet him and he doesn't snarl. A bad sign. Antoine must be really off his game. His fur is nearly frozen. Karen grabs a towel from the bathroom and dries him off as best she can, and then she plugs in the hair dryer and aims the warm air at him. Antoine yelps in protest and only then does it occur to Karen that if
he
went out, someone
else
must have come
in
. She tiptoes to the back door. It's locked, but Antoine's paw prints are still visible in small wet spots that dot the tiled kitchen floor. There are no larger, footprint-size puddles, which tells her that whoever came in cleaned up the telltale tracks. Did one of the boys stop by? No. Robbie's still at work—she'd spoken to him not an hour ago, and Jon's on Martha's Vineyard with his girlfriend's parents.

This time she doesn't hesitate to call the police.

“Please,” she says. “Hurry.”

“Anything out of place? The house look different at all?”

“Haven't checked,” she says and she hangs up. She only hopes whoever broke in found a way to get back out again. She slinks down the hall to the back bedrooms, barely breathing. The wide-screen TV still sits pompously in the living room; the computer she uses for her writing projects is open on a desk in the den.

She walks to the back of the house. Her jewelry, when she looks in the box, is still there. At least at first glance, everything appears untouched. Outside, a police car whirs to a stop, and she goes quickly to the door to let in the patrolman. Officer Rush. Fitting. He's alone.

“Aren't you supposed to come in pairs?” she says, but Officer Rush just shakes his head.

“Not on something like this,” he says, and Karen knows he isn't taking her call seriously. He is here perfunctorily, but she hasn't a faintest hope that Officer Rush will do much about—about what, exactly? A wet dog? She clears her throat.

“So. Anything missing?” Officer Rush wonders. He taps his pen lightly against his pad. He stands inside the doorway, but just barely.

“Not so far. No,” Karen says, “but I haven't really had a chance to—you know—really.
Thoroughly
. You arrived so quickly.”